A compelling portrait of the life of a man “subject to and involved in history, who believed…that by interpreting the past...
A brief, erudite exposition of the Florentine secretary’s mores and intentions.
In this accessible work, Celenza (Classics/Johns Hopkins Univ.) explores why Machiavelli’s The Prince continues to enthrall readers and how the author’s other, less-well-known works, such as his comedies, can help enrich the way we understand him. Employing both biography and history, Celenza delves deep into Machiavelli’s world. Born in 1469 into a cultured family in which the Latin classics were significant parts of his education, Machiavelli lived in a time when the Italian language was just emerging richly from the more stultified Latin, thanks largely to the work of Dante. In 15th-century Florence, the concentration of wealth and influence, exemplified by the Medici family, reached its terrible climax in the murder of Giuliano Medici in 1478 by the rival Pazzi family, with his brother Lorenzo the Magnificent barely escaping with his life. These “premodern conditions” meant that life was fraught with conflict and violence close to home, themes that Machiavelli used to full effect in The Prince. A man of action himself, Machiavelli had held important ambassadorial offices during the Florentine republic’s tumultuous time at the start of the 16th century. He witnessed Cesare Borgia’s military rise and fall, a series of events that impressed on him the importance of a vigorous military behind a decisive leader. When the Medicis returned to power, Machiavelli was imprisoned, tortured and then confined to his farm, where he began writing The Prince as a way of ingratiating himself with his potential new employers. Celenza explores its language (“lapidary, often funny and homespun, but utterly elegant”), its form as a dialogue, its allusions to Latin classics and, above all, Machiavelli's insistence on looking at the world as it is rather than how it ought to be.
A compelling portrait of the life of a man “subject to and involved in history, who believed…that by interpreting the past sagely, one could act more fruitfully in the present.”Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-674-41612-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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